You have done a good job of describing the extremes, I am wondering if you could explain the 'happy middle.' Is that where you find yourself, in the middle?

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Truthfinder:the birds adapt and change through million of years in order to survive ,is that science, then cats should evolve also wings to better catch the birdsMailbag:On a side note, back in college before my conversion, I actually saw a demon sitting next to me in critical thinking class.

Noooo. For the last time - I said, and still say, that iron IS A dance (not that IT dances). There's a difference. The whole point of my continuing with this is to point out that important difference. On a truly objective level, there is no such thing as iron, we know that it's just an arbitrary, mathematically inevitable configuration of charged vectors that behaves, moves, or 'dances' for us in an IRONIC way, heh. (A little bit of meta-irony for you).

There is no underlying matter, just materialized patterns of mass, spin, charge, etc. It's almost entirely movement and empty space - the remainder is just a placeholder, having no particular properties of it's own - it's just a cursor of physicality - nothing but a needle's point in the process of making a needlepoint.

How matter appears to us

How matter would appear if completely static (point of the pin only)

Like the image on your screen right now. The screen itself has a layer of pixels, but it's what the one active pixel is doing which makes the image, not the pixel-ness of the pixel, but our ability to transmit visual information using that pixel activity of racing across the screen fast enough to fool our eye.

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Yet there you have used a phrase that is clear to everyone! Please use more words and fewer words with meanings that are almost solely the province of the philosopher of the 60s.

So philosophy of the 1780s is good, 1960s bad. So much for human enlightenment progressing over time I guess.

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I accepted the invitation, please give a definitive list of the patterns governed by laws and the laws governed by patterns so I will not accept the same invitation again.

Even Republicans don't expect to be able to tell their opponent to filibuster themselves.

I don't define words for adults, unless they are obscure terms. You provide a list and I'll tell you where I agree. Not that it matters. Why care about the difference between law and pattern? Where do you want to go with this?

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There is no such thing as a lack of X without X.

I would think that a lack of X implied there was no X.

If there was no X, how can there be a lack of it? A lack of what? X doesn't exist.

Light can be modeled as creating the possibility of our subjective visual experience of hue, chroma, and value.sourceShadow, which is what I'm talking about (as opposed to white v black) is a relative term that just means 'lower Value'. It's not the absence of all light - which would be neither light, shadow, black, white, nor colored, but literally invisible.

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No, even surrounded by blind men, I still see light. They may not, but indeed it is still there. (It’s not like the tree in the forest.)

I like my example better because it emphasizes that no light means no possibility of light, but fine, we'll go with the simpler example I was going to use first.

A person can see that a tree makes a shadow during the day. If you take that tree and put it into a completely dark and sealed room...is there still a shadow of that tree? Even if you're blind and even if you are on the side of the world bathed in daylight, there is no visible tree or shadow without the presence of light.

If you turn the example around, and try to make shadow supervene upon light, it doesn't really work, does it? If you shine a bright light on a shadow, the shadow disappears...because it doesn't exist, it's only a pattern of relative lack of light.

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Your claim is that food produces hunger which does not seem to stand up to scrutiny.

The existence of food does produce hunger. Bricks have no food. Are they hungry? Where is this scrutiny? Bring it on.

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No. Your point that Entropy comes from entropy is far from made. Please explain how entropy manages to get up off its arse.

No, I'm saying that entropy coming from entropy is YOUR point. I'm asking you to explain where entropy comes from and you're trying to cover for the lack of an answer. My answer is that obviously entropy and syntropy, teleology and teleonomy are all parts of the same process.

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Or is matter a property of atomic structure?

What's the difference? Semantics.

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Where did that come from.

No idea. Have you?

I think that the cosmos is literally made of order. It doesn't come from somewhere else, order is what the cosmos is - what it always has been and likely always will be.

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I’m sure we can get to an answer if we simply say Omm enough times. Or, failing that, we can sit in philosophy class and work it out without actually making any scientific observations. I’m sure the absolute truth is in all of us.

That's not how I got my answer, but I think mine works just fine. I suppose I could try to get another answer by going online and telling people that whatever they say is wrong, senseless, and unprovable and see if it works better.

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So, does all this garbage about “order” help us at all?

It's your enlightenment, do with it what you want. Or don't.

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If you make a big bang happen, you need a universe which first allows banging.

There are problems with the human mind. It can’t grasp infinity, it seems stuck in 3 dimensions and it seems to be hung up on cause and effect in the 3D world. It’ll be that way forever.

Sounds like something out of a church sermon. The human mind isn't limited to 3 dimensions. Cosmologists seem comfortable with 10 or more. I like 10 too but a different 10.

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Your claim there is valid only if the universe is basically like the human’s view of their neighbourhood. It probably isn’t.

It's not a claim, it's observations and ideas. I've never said that the human's view of their neighborhood is basically like the universe, I'm saying that all we'll ever know is that neighborhood, so for all intents and purposes, that is the universe. What happens outside of our neighborhood isn't accessible to us.

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Hold it right there! May I suggest that if we can never know, then any inference is bound to be false.

False relative to the noumenal univese, maybe, but again, unknowable and irrelevant. False to our phenomenal view, not at all, if the inference has explanatory power then what's the problem?

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In view of my last statement, “no.”

in view of my last statement about your last statement, "yes"

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This is true for anything that exists and can be described. I feel the words, “square” and “circle” had to be coined though.

Of course the words were coined. They were coined for the purpose of referring to a pattern which as always potentially existed.

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Intuition is what we have as a result of not bothering to reason for a lifetime.

Reason is only a type of intuition. Intuition is primary.

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After acceding to the idea that only nerve cells communicate meaning fully, you then try to escape from your admission. For Shame!

Human meaning is the communication of nerve cells, but those meanings are their (our) communication of cellular meaning with other cells, which are based on molecular communications with other molecules and energies.

Back to the protocol stack. We are an application. Our meaning is color, words, feelings, thoughts, images, archetypes. Those meanings ride on top of a cultural presentation layer, which is built on an anthropological session layer, a physiological transport layer, a biological network layer, a chemical datalink layer, and an atomic physical layer. All of those layers are communicating order, pattern, or 'meaning' in their own language.

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That’s probably because you are incapable of expressing yourself in common English.

If I want to order lunch, I use common English. If I want to discuss the cosmos, I have to use whatever forms of English I deem appropriate.

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I’ll say it again, you are capable of dispensing with a specialised vocabulary – you did it above in defining noumenal or at least using a phrase that does not send people rushing to dictionaries and causing further problems over a precise definition.

I don't work for you. I don't have a suggestion box. Like I said, read Chalmers instead if you like.

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If you expressed your ideas clearly (No, really clearly and it is not clear when you throw uncommon words and concepts about) you may have more fish biting. I’m sure most people don’t mind one or two strange words in a page, but 5 per sentence is wearing.

Sorry, but again, I don't know my audience. I do this for me. If you get something out of it, great. There are millions of publications that I have no interest in reading, but I've never once thought of that as the author's problem.

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My wife is a philosopher, her comment was, “I’ve seen hundreds like him, it’s all pointless, he plays with words. I doubt he really knows what he intends to say.” But then she can be harsh.

If that's what you think, why keep reading and responding?

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Look, I’m trying to be helpful here, a Dutch Uncle if you will. The concepts you are putting forward may or may not have validity but if no one can tell, you might as well give up.

Hahaha. More like a Dutch Oven.

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Was it Wittgenstein who said, “Of that we do not know, we should not speak.”?

not should not, can not.

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Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

* Translated: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. (7) * Also: About what one can not speak, one must remain silent.

I agree, language and logic are limited. We can only express a finite scope of our experience through speech and writing.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

You have done a good job of describing the extremes, I am wondering if you could explain the 'happy middle.' Is that where you find yourself, in the middle?

Sure. First, no, I don't find myself in the middle necessarily, but I find myself seeing the middle range as being the most sane.

The middle isn't necessarily more happy, it's just that the 'happy' is distributed more evenly. It's maybe more 'content' and general.

The extremes bring insanity and misery but also genius and ecstasy. A scientist might be the most hostile OMM SOB you've ever met, and he might live on nothing but plain white bread and raw beef, but if his obsessive focus brings about a Magnum Opus of tremendous value - well, I'm cool with that. I mean if he chose to eat other people, or stuff their bodies as taxidermy, then I would say that it taking devout physicalism too far.

Likewise a spiritual guru might be so inspiring and charismatic that they redeem people's lives and give them purpose but if they push it too far into the brainwashed indoctrinations, fanatical proselytizing, involuntary sex and group suicide zone, then also, not good.

The middle range is where subjective is most objective (behavior, ego for example) and objective is most subjective (environment, and health for example). It's the range which seems most ordinary and vernacular to us. What we do, where we go, who and what we are in the mundane sense. No great technological intricacies, no great mystical awakenings, just regular folks living their regular, somewhat sane lives. Not peaceful or happy necessarily - the middle range brings all of our drama into focus. It's a struggle, but one which all people share almost all the time.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Thanx. I know I said I was going to sit on the sidelines (no longer participate).

This subject is very interesting to me, but I really don't want it to be! I don't like having to think so hard.

I'll go back to reading between my fingers with my hands over my face, now.

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Truthfinder:the birds adapt and change through million of years in order to survive ,is that science, then cats should evolve also wings to better catch the birdsMailbag:On a side note, back in college before my conversion, I actually saw a demon sitting next to me in critical thinking class.

"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

There is no underlying matter, just materialized patterns of mass, spin, charge, etc. It's almost entirely movement and empty space

it may well be and we, and thus our thoughts, are the same. However, it is not very helpful in the world we inhabit. This existentialism is akin to giving up and inventing something just so as not to be bothered.

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Yet there you have used a phrase that is clear to everyone! Please use more words and fewer words with meanings that are almost solely the province of the philosopher of the 60s.

So philosophy of the 1780s is good, 1960s bad. So much for human enlightenment progressing over time I guess.

I think you swerved that point. I am, as you knew, talking of your specialised vocabulary, that I now note is lessening.

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Why care about the difference between law and pattern?

If you recall, it was you that claimed a distinction

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Where do you want to go with this?

I would like you to say there is no difference between a law and a pattern.

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If there was no X, how can there be a lack of it? A lack of what? X doesn't exist.

It’s probably different where you are, but round here there’s a lack of unicorns.

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I'm asking you to explain where entropy comes from and you're trying to cover for the lack of an answer.

… and what is the form and nature of this order? Can this order be subdivided? How does it manage to transmit any information? Is it subject to time?

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I suppose I could try to get another answer by going online and telling people that whatever they say is wrong, senseless, and unprovable and see if it works better.

There are three responses to this: (i) If what you say is say is wrong, senseless, and unprovable, it is garbage (ii) if what you say is not wrong, senseless, and unprovable, you should be able to show it is correct, is at one with reason and prove it. (iii) if it is a mixture of the two, it should be refined.

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So, does all this garbage about “order” help us at all?

It's your enlightenment, do with it what you want. Or don't.

Ah! An appeal to you as a great luminary. If I don’t accept your word blindly, I’ve forgone knowledge; if I agree with you, I too have your exalted status.

For Shame!

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There are problems with the human mind. It can’t grasp infinity, it seems stuck in 3 dimensions and it seems to be hung up on cause and effect in the 3D world. It’ll be that way forever.

Sounds like something out of a church sermon. The human mind isn't limited to 3 dimensions. Cosmologists seem comfortable with 10 or more. I like 10 too but a different 10.

Well, you would, wouldn’t you – hey, what do those cosmologists know.

BTW the other dimensions are only apparent in theory. Not visible as you would like.

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This is true for anything that exists and can be described. I feel the words, “square” and “circle” had to be coined though.

Of course the words were coined. They were coined for the purpose of referring to a pattern which as always potentially existed.

You mean like “typewriter” when that came into existence?

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Reason is only a type of intuition.

Look up a definition. (I don’t usually say that to adults.) ‘Reason’ seems to be when you work out something according to the facts; intuition seems to be a stab in the dark.

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Intuition is primary.

I’ll wager that there is as much in this universe that is counterintuitive as intuitive

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We are an application. Our meaning is color, words, feelings, thoughts, images, archetypes. Those meanings ride on top of a cultural presentation layer, which is built on an anthropological session layer, a physiological transport layer, a biological network layer, a chemical datalink layer, and an atomic physical layer. All of those layers are communicating order, pattern, or 'meaning' in their own language.

… and from this you conclude that there is an ‘order’ sufficient unto itself that exists without form or substance and which influences human lives and perception?

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If I want to order lunch, I use common English. If I want to discuss the cosmos, I have to use whatever forms of English I deem appropriate.

Imagine you’re out to lunch.

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I don't work for you.

Indeed not!

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If you expressed your ideas clearly […]

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There are millions of publications that I have no interest in reading, but I've never once thought of that as the author's problem.

Perhaps you should. Clarity of communication, let it be your watch phrase.

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My wife is a philosopher, her comment was, “I’ve seen hundreds like him, it’s all pointless, he plays with words. I doubt he really knows what he intends to say.” But then she can be harsh.

Personally, I don’t think you can be a philosopher if you don’t have your own unique theory, or at least a variation of someone else’s, but that’s by the bye.

So, as I understand it, you conclude that there is an ‘order’ sufficient unto itself that exists independent of time without form or substance and which influences the entire universe including human lives and perception?

The ‘order’ is expressed at the subatomic level by random ‘dances’ of probability waves that themselves are patterns (for that is their nature.) Their nature is dictated by ‘order’.

In a sort of Mandelbrot way, these patterns then pervade the entire contents of the universe, us and all other possible life forms included. There is no area of consciousness left untouched by them.

You include as examples supporting your conjecture, a cushion, a picture, as yet unexplained, and some diatoms.

The universe is probably cyclical.

There are some people who like a subjective view, there are some people who like an objective view, there are some people who are a mixture of both.

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Nobody says “There are many things that we thought were natural processes, but now know that a god did them.”

it may well be and we, and thus our thoughts, are the same. However, it is not very helpful in the world we inhabit.

Half of the world we inhabit is our own minds. If we change that, maybe we can then act to help change the other half. It's like the Pope telling Charles Darwin that his view of creation "is not very helpful in the world we inhabit".

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This existentialism is akin to giving up and inventing something just so as not to be bothered.

As opposed to what, the worldview that dictates that every experience can be reduced to the same involuntary and automatic reproduction drives as mold?

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I would like you to say there is no difference between a law and a pattern.

Pattern and Law are two different English words for similar, overlapping, but not identical concepts. As with all words, their plasticity is such that their meaning can be conflated with other words if you want to do that, and that's fine. I think that if you asked a police officer if smoking a joint while driving is 'Against the pattern', and insisted that he was an 'Officer of the pattern' or a 'Patternman" he would have probable cause to search your car for cannabis.

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It’s probably different where you are, but round here there’s a lack of unicorns.

Maybe if we fertilize some of the unicorn shadows one will grow.

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I'm asking you to explain where entropy comes from and you're trying to cover for the lack of an answer.

Where did you ask that?Back in there somewhere. You were all "the movement toward entropy" and I was all "what is it moving away from" (because the answer can only be order, right?).

I'd say that information is already a transmission of sorts. To transmit a text outside of it's context, it gets transduced and conducted through a medium. It's just extending what the information already does to a different location.

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Is it subject to time?

Time is a kind of order, too. It's a measure of the change in the universe modeled in a sequential progression. Some patterns and orders are subject to temporal change, to entropy (another king of sequential progression model of the changes in matter and energy), and others, not as much - not as relevant. Like, 'do circles get old'?

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There are three responses to this: (i) If what you say is say is wrong, senseless, and unprovable, it is garbage

In which case, why continue reading it?

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(ii) if what you say is not wrong, senseless, and unprovable, you should be able to show it is correct, is at one with reason and prove it.

This presumes to know that your standard of correct, reasonable, and proven are immutable and universal. Which they are not.

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(iii) if it is a mixture of the two, it should be refined.

Refine away. Be my guest.

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Ah! An appeal to you as a great luminary. If I don’t accept your word blindly, I’ve forgone knowledge; if I agree with you, I too have your exalted status.

No, I'm just saying your illuminations are your own. Do with them what you like.

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You mean like “typewriter” when that came into existence?

Not all words refer to eternal morphological principles.

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‘Reason’ seems to be when you work out something according to the facts; intuition seems to be a stab in the dark.

Intuition tells you which facts are important and which aren't. It tells you how to synthesize coherent patterns out of facts. It's the stab in the dark which is the only means of producing light.

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I’ll wager that there is as much in this universe that is counterintuitive as intuitive

That could certainly be the case. Again though, order begets disorder, intuition begets counterintuition, light begets shadow.

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… and from this you conclude that there is an ‘order’ sufficient unto itself that exists without form or substance and which influences human lives and perception?

Form is order. Substance is order. Influence is order. Human lives and perception are order.

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So, as I understand it, you conclude that there is an ‘order’ sufficient unto itself that exists independent of time without form or substance and which influences the entire universe including human lives and perception?

Depends what you mean by exists and by independence. Order informs existence. It is that which existence is informed by. Is the similarity of the whorl of a spiral galaxy similar to the whorl of a hurricane?

Does then 'whorl' exist? If you convert an mp3 file to ascii text and print it out, is that music? What if it's sheet music instead? All of these questions we can only ask from our own intuition - they can't me understood in terms of exterior mechanics - of a how does water or stars know how to whorl. The fact is that they do whorl, and that's a manifestation of order, of sense.

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The ‘order’ is expressed at the subatomic level by random ‘dances’ of probability waves that themselves are patterns (for that is their nature.) Their nature is dictated by ‘order’.

A bit redundant, because here nature and order is interchangeable - their nature isn't dictated by order, it's physical nature/order just IS, but yes.

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In a sort of Mandelbrot way, these patterns then pervade the entire contents of the universe, us and all other possible life forms included.

I wouldn't say they pervade the contents of the universe, I'd say that they ARE the entire contents of the universe. There's no contents without them.

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You include as examples supporting your conjecture, a cushion, a picture, as yet unexplained, and some diatoms.

I explained the picture - needlepoint=what we call matter, tip of the needle=the portion of matter which is actual material and not just patterns of spin and space. Meaning mostly matter is motion and pattern, not 'stuff' with mass."If a proton were the size of a marble an electron would be about the width of a human hair. With that scale the electron's orbit would be about 2 1/2 miles away from the proton." source WikiAnswer

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The universe is probably cyclical.

Sure. I'm down with that. On one level at least. I'd say more spiral.

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There are some people who like a subjective view, there are some people who like an objective view, there are some people who are a mixture of both.

Whether anyone likes their worldview or not doesn't matter, it's the fact that they see the world from a biased frame of reference, depending on their mood, personality, etc. Consciousness is a continuum of subjectivity and objectivity which defines our cosmos.

The subjective does not always take precedence over the objective (ACME - delusional imagination) and the objective does not always take precedence over the subjective (OMM - devout physicalism). Consciousness does what it wants on the inside, and does what it needs on the outside.

« Last Edit: June 17, 2010, 02:47:02 PM by Immediacracy »

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

The caption at the top gives compass directions which I try to loosely follow in the spatial layout of the composition. This was my original purpose, to visually represent this horizontal spectrum of phenomena, from most subjective on the right to most objective on the left. Along the vertical axis, I had a looser schema in mind - micro on the bottom, macro on the top. This seems to have translated to something else on the subjective side, a more literal 'above<>below', but on the objective half, it seems to be 'macro<>micro'.

In the center left of the image we see a naturalistic, stylized image of a transparent, colorless human body with a truncated cranium. The supine posture is significant as it portrays the body from the perspective of medical science. An X-Ray of a patient or a cadaver, lying face down. A model of purely physiological systems. The human features are transparent and irrelevant - a generic mannequin face just there to provide dorsal/ventral orientation. Mainly highlighted there is a rather lifeless brain and spinal column.

Above it we see a portmanteau of the Earth's atmosphere seen from space and a solar eclipse forming a serendipitous sense of sunlight filtering through a blue green ocean. The half circle above is telescopic, showing galaxies in deep space. The hemisphere below the face is microscopic, a human ovum being fertilized at conception. The top and bottom circles, as well as the yin/yang curve of the back of the neck subliminally suggest something of the hourglass form that I had originally intended to use as a theme on the object side. The sense of the circle divided. The inflection point of physicality over subjectivity.

On the right, we see a closeup of a model's eye, the truncated circle of the pupil mirroring the cranium so that what lies within the pupil's circle could be read as a view of what's going on inside the skeletal body's brain. The pupil's blurred periphery represents the subjective visual field, and within it, a mixture of photographic images and hand drawn characters suggesting the fugue of consciousness's multivalent perceptual and cognitive data streams. The pupil collage is anchored by the landscape photo - an ordinary leafless tree and fence on the left, sky above, road below. The fisheye lens effect exaggerates the perspective of the fence and gives a tone 'first person singular' narrative of a somewhat dreamy, somewhat real subjective experience - a scene.

Adding to the narrative, the black cat, mirrored in the center, and echoed in a cartoon form with a head that resembles a black crescent moon. The Sun/Moon theme was unintentional, but it shows up again in the top right with the heliocentric zodiac image and the crescent of the letter C. The cartoon cat's tail echoes the black crescent moon theme as well, it's backwards S shape similar to the curve of the cadaver's neck, only vertically.

The photo, cartoon, and word CAT plays on semiotic themes, such as the Peircean Trichotomy, with it's Icon, Index, and Symbol distinctions, and the common distinction of image, icon, and word. What I'm pointing out here is that the subjective side is a reflection of exterior phenomena, as reinforced by the square of reflected light that dominates the upper right quadrant of the pupil, highlighting some blue sky and gentle clouds, beneath a canopy of eyelashes which are nearly indistinguishable from the tree branches. The extreme closeup of the eyelid and eyelashes are also suggestive of mirror reflection, owing to the intimacy of the underdistancing. *Underdistancing is a real term that I picked up from a university class on Human Consciousness - the professor talked about humor falling flat if the joke is too revealing, too close. "Too soon?" at a funeral, etc.

The flower below adds to the solar/mandala/iris theme, the bright colors offsetting the desaturated tones of the imagery inside the pupil circle/mind's eye so that the pupil can be seen as a cataract, and the eyelid frame on top, as a reducing valve (to paraphrase Huxley) which filters the psychedelic intensity of full-blown subjectivity. Here, the literal up and down of the scene within the pupil, with it's subtle fisheye zoom and reflected window combines with the language of consciousness, of feeling 'up' or 'down', going 'inside' and 'outside' of yourself. Reflection, mirroring (in the doublecat and the whole eye - self consciousness), projection (is hinted at in the blurred sides of the 'window', and in the superimposition of the words Cute_And_Troublesome) - all having to do with how images are conducted through light, and how meaning is conducted through images to...the Self.

Okay, I'll stop there for now. Probably more later this weekend (or today if I don't have to try to serve back all of y'alls accusations and arguments all day). Remember, this is not ACME/OMM yet - this is the center section. There's probably more stuff in there that I haven't mentioned or seen in there, so feel free to point out any in your non-critical comments. (Save those for the end...after I finish the expanded collage. This post is probably one of four.).

« Last Edit: June 18, 2010, 08:47:10 AM by Immediacracy »

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Now, to finish of the original composition, first on the right, subjective, interior, teleological side:Here, the additions of subliminal, graphic, ideographic, glyphic, symbolic, and abstract elements broaden the scope of this examination of phenomenology. From where we left off, around the symmetry line of the black doublecat, we are beginning to see indications that double meanings are present. The black cat of course, both the subject of many superstitions (they have been considered lucky in some cultures, and unlucky in others), and a cliche or synecdoche of superstition itself. Juxtaposed with the word 'Trouble' barely visible beneath the doublecat, a subliminal alert is signaled. An omen, or sign. The converging cats can be associated with indecision as well - the portal of self inquiry which subliminally invites the viewer to choose which interpretation to go with - the literal, clearheaded, object facing side of pure reason, or through the looking glass.

The iconic Lichtenstein eye has several associated meanings which relate to self observation, vanity, perspective, skew or slant. It has to so with the feed back loop of the self's recursive recognition of the self. It unintentionally resembles the Eye of Horus , carrying the symbolic ancient theme of royal power and protection(thus both social status) as well as the modern reference to the American 1 dollar bill (thus yoking together Eye, I, and 1 (one, as in someone) together in a masculine syzygy which will become more pronounced later in the Expanded Composition.

The Lichtenstein eye is perched in mid air, reflecting it's imaginative, cartoon surreality, appears to observe the observed scene in the pupil. The mind's eye's I, if you will. Agency. It radiates or is overlayed with a kind of glitchy, pixelated decal mandala of crudely drawn Chinese I Ching ideograms and lunar phases, reflecting again the crescent moon and it's alchemical meanings of hidden truths partially revealed, intuition, the lunar cycle and it's association with women.

The I Ching is about categorizing and sequencing archetypal moments of change. It is an attempt to characterize the DNA of change itself; to invoke a third eye, or I and I which sees beyond the appearances of the Self. Here the Self projects it's own pattern recognition onto the cosmos, asks or prays to it for guidance. It is the Self seeking to go beyond itself through a process which can be considered both superficial self-negation or as deep self transcendence, depending on which side of the doublecat you choose to follow.

To me, the Eye, I, and 1 also invite the other meaning 1 in binary terms. Yes. Aye. The point of the eye's pyramid pointing to the translucent alphanumeric chart above is vaguely reminiscent of a Ouija board, with it's YES, NO, and GOOD BYE missing. Between chart and the 'aye', we can see the mirror image of the tree, now unintentionally but unmistakably taking on the role of a hand or a palm. There's a lot more in there, the tendrils of the branches and lashes resemble dendrites, while the central mandala is slightly axon-like. The S tail is snake like, with the tree, hinting at Garden of Eden themes - evil, deception, banishment, with the two tree hands seeming distressed, helpless, or dying.

Beneath the 'Aye' there is an area of abstract impressionistic color next to steel blue-grey. This reads to me as a further extrapolation of Vision. What do 'U' 'C'? is a question that the composition might be posing to the Aye. The base of the pyramid is qualia, as might be generated in response to stimulation of rod and cone cells. The patterns of raw visual stimulation - exoteric subjective phenomena.

On the top right, we see a zodiacal mandala, with it's heliocentric graphics of a geocentric/homocentric esoteric worldview. This is yet another kind of Icon dating back to fertile crescent, another aspect of intuitive, superstitious vision. The theme of Egyptian royal power of the Eye of Horus amidst the wheel of change here ascends to divine power as a fully abstracted picture of the solar eye surrounded by the wheel of zodiacal glyphs. The self's perception of it's own divine unity, it's wishful oneness with the reflection of it's own Idealized Self - uncontaminated by 'dirty' physicality and unshaded by circumstance and darkness - a vision of ultimate Alpha strength. The number 9 and letter I (the 9th letter of the alphabet) are visible beneath the equinox line of the zodiac as well.

So, in this panel, we have Eye, I, You (the large pupil is an exteriorized 'you'), U (drawn black cat's face and all three cats tails...the scene of the black cat on the road suggesting perhaps that you make a 'U-Turn'). There is esoteric and exoteric, West and East, In and Out, Up and Down (both emotion, direction, and nobility/esteem/idolatry), around (and around). And that's only halfway through the rabbit hole.

More to come...

« Last Edit: June 18, 2010, 12:01:54 PM by Immediacracy »

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

All of it is; we have nothing else with which to compare it. Even if it is not as we imagine, it doesn’t matter because we can do nothing about it, not even perceive it to say that it differs from our view.

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This existentialism is akin to giving up and inventing something just so as not to be bothered.

As opposed to what, the worldview that dictates that every experience can be reduced to the same involuntary and automatic reproduction drives as mold?

Yes. And it’s not a “worldview” it is a simple explanation that you don’t like but are unable to counter.

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I'm asking you to explain where entropy comes from and you're trying to cover for the lack of an answer.

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Where did you ask that?Back in there somewhere. You were all "the movement toward entropy" and I was all "what is it moving away from" (because the answer can only be order, right?).

Look at your reply 198 - “Why a delay? What about entropy that comes from entropy takes time to happen?”

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I don't have a problem with entropy, I'm just saying that it's not the only thing going on in the universe. There is a counterbalance to entropy - order.

Surely entropy will be perfect order – a place for everything and everything in its place…

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… and what is the form and nature of this order?

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It's every form. Every nature.

Right…. but we can’t see, hear or detect it. It cannot be measured. Seems like someone’s idea of God and with just as much evidence.

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How does it [order] manage to transmit any information?

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I'd say that information is already a transmission of sorts.

This is a complete evasion Your answer makes no sense whatsoever. Will you please explain how ‘order’ is transmitted to those things that receive ‘order’?

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(ii) if what you say is not wrong, senseless, and unprovable, you should be able to show it is correct, is at one with reason and prove it.

This presumes to know that your standard of correct, reasonable, and proven are immutable and universal. Which they are not.

So you are saying you have not the slightest proof or evidence for your idea?

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Ah! An appeal to you as a great luminary. If I don’t accept your word blindly, I’ve forgone knowledge; if I agree with you, I too have your exalted status.

No, I'm just saying your illuminations are your own. Do with them what you like.

You’re not saying that at all. Please re-read what you wrote.

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‘Reason’ seems to be when you work out something according to the facts; intuition seems to be a stab in the dark.

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Intuition tells you which facts are important

You are simply wrong. Intuition ‘tells’ nothing. It suggests without evidence. If it had evidence, it would be reason.

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… and from this you conclude that there is an ‘order’ sufficient unto itself that exists without form or substance and which influences human lives and perception?

Form is order. Substance is order. Influence is order. Human lives and perception are order.

So you have just named everything as ‘order. So when I ask, “How did that happen?” You reply, “Order did it.”

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Depends what you mean by exists and by independence. Order informs existence.

How does it inform things?

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The ‘order’ is expressed at the subatomic level by random ‘dances’ of probability waves that themselves are patterns (for that is their nature.) Their nature is dictated by ‘order’.

A bit redundant, because here nature and order is interchangeable - their nature isn't dictated by order, it's physical nature/order just IS, but yes.

Bit like God then? Allegedly, He just IS…

I think I can no longer post in reply to any of your points or posts. Immediacracy, thank you for your time, the experience has been memorable.

« Last Edit: June 18, 2010, 11:50:09 AM by Graybeard »

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Nobody says “There are many things that we thought were natural processes, but now know that a god did them.”

The left side of the Original Composition deals with objectivity, externality, and requires a different epistemological approach. Left of the center of this panel we see that the coherence of the image breaks down. It loses some of the sense of artistic collage and presents patterns in an arbitrary, rectilinear arrangement. Noticeably absent is the superfluous meaning which dominated the previous panel's right side. In this Left panel left side (Ll), there are no obvious overlays or forced symmetries - pretty much WYSIWYG.

Not to say there isn't anything to be read into here, but now the compass points to an entirely different magnetic North. The top of the image features the curvature of the Earth, the atmosphere, and outer space, connoting an orientation to our planet, meteorology, and to gravity. The cloud patterns reflect a pure essence of teleonomy; entropy, evaporation, shapeless shapes with permeable boundaries. Inside a cloud, there is no form at all, from a distance, the cloud appears like solid clump.

The entire Left panel deals with the side of consciousness/the cosmos which is concrete or empty. It deals with opacity and density, structure and motion, rather than meaning and image. The bottom of the Ll is anchored by a snowflake pattern which also resembles the benzene ring - (the discovery of which represents an important milestone in the history of organic chemistry). There is some echo of the mandala patterns from the Right side, but in this context they are molecular, and crystalline - shaped in the pattern not to represent the Self, but more like wheel spokes, out of physical efficiency. They represent nothing, they are the presentation only.

The rectangular elements are shown in false color to de-familiarize them, thus stripping them of subjective associations and present them in a more objective light. The tallest rectangle is a piece of a satellite photo (of Vatican City) which sits above another stack of rectangles showing a closeup of a microprocessor which also resembles a genetic fingerprinting test. To the left of these are negatives of two zebra faces on top of a closeup of muscle tissue, but also suggests liquid melting from or freezing to the snowflake below.

The high and low here are in the sense of quantity, volume, or scale rather than emotional ups and downs or social elevation. Positive and negative have no moral dimension here, but are mere polarity and contrast. The patterns reflect the concrete presentation of the exterior world, it's evolution, it's process, in all it's pristine, soulless wonder.

Maybe I'll stop here. If anyone wants me to go into detail on the Expanded Composition, PM me and I'll post more. You should be able to get the idea - the extremes just get more extreme until they reach a point of complete dissolution of either meaning or substance.

« Last Edit: June 18, 2010, 12:35:55 PM by Immediacracy »

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

I think I can no longer post in reply to any of your points or posts. Immediacracy, thank you for your time, the experience has been memorable.

Thanks. I'm skipping reading your last responses.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler